Sprint brought back two popular cell phones for another round on Sunday when it announced new versions of the Sanyo Katana and the Motorola Razr.

Sporting thin designs (of course) with GPS and multimedia-friendly feature sets, the Sanyo Katana Eclipse and the Motorola Razr VE20 offer two takes on the thin-phone craze that just won't go away. And before you start grumbling about rehashed versions of ancient designs, we advise you to give these models a decent look.

The VE20 is more like the original Razr V3m than the Razr2 V9, but it shows some design tweaks that give it its own style. Performance is great, particularly the music and video quality, and call quality wasn't bad, either.

The Sanyo Katana Eclipse also shows some design tweaks over the original Katana. The feature set is similar to the Razr VE20, though its 1.3-megapixel camera is a step down from the Razr VE20's 2-megapixel shooter. Performance was satisfying, thought not quite as sharp as on the Moto phone.

Motorola Razr VE20
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks

Both phones are $99 with service. For the full story, check out our Motorola Razr VE20 review or our Sanyo Katana Eclipse review. Or for just the beauty shots, take a gander at the Razr VE20 slide show or the Katana Eclipse slide show.

About the author

Kent German leads CNET's How To coverage and is the senior managing editor of CNET Magazine. A veteran of CNET since 2003, he started in San Francisco and is now based in the London office. When not at work, he's planning his next trip to Australia, going for a run, or watching planes land at the airport (yes, really).
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